Many methods and products have been developed to prevent the unauthorized reproduction of original valuable documents, such as currency, traveler's checks, checks, coupons, gift certificates, licenses, passports, personal identification papers, and packaging material for brand protection to deter illegal activities such as counterfeiting. These documents may be produced using standard press processes such as but not limiting to offset printing (lithography), letterpress, flexographic, intaglio and gravure. Generally, these methods and products enable unauthorized copies of original documents to be readily distinguished from the originals.
Examples of such methods and products include embedding images and/or moiré patterns in the original documents that are nearly invisible to the naked eye but which become apparent upon photocopying. However, many of the described document protection methods and products are formulated for press printed documents. It is reportedly difficult for these technologies to be translated to print at a lower resolution digitally printed platform and remain effective against ever advancing reproduction equipment such as copiers and scanners. Variable security utilizing the above-mentioned methods and products wherein each printed document is varied and is unique and not fixed is non-existent and cost prohibited.
Other methods and products have been developed to prevent the unauthorized reproduction of original documents to deter counterfeiting and may be produced on digital output devices such as laser printers and ink-jet printers and printed on demand. The methods and products may include (a) the use of digital watermarking where a covert security feature is embedded into an image by making subtle changes to the data of the original digital content or (b) the use of encryption secured elements such as the use of encrypted barcodes linking actual data on the document with a barcode. However, most of these digitally printed document protection methods focus on the use of covert security features and the method of authentication is a physical mechanical scan of said features using scanners and authentication software.
Further methods and products such as using a “scrambled Indicia” covert security feature for example, which may be printed on demand with digital output devices, are again related to the use of a covert security feature that must be authenticated by the use of a decoder. Many of these security features that are digitally printed using digital output devices such as laser printers and/or ink-jet printers and/or digital presses. The features may be variable, printed on demand and may be designed as covert features to prevent the unauthorized reproduction of original documents and may only be authenticated during the authentication process. However, these described document protection methods and printings produced using these methods concentrate on covert security features that may not be distorted by photocopiers.
Therefore, what is needed in the art is a document protection method and apparatus that enables a simple and expedient way to incorporate improved distortion security features, that may be variable and printed on demand into a digitally printed original document using laser printers (including laser copier/printer) and/or ink-jet printers and/or digital presses such as but not limited to the HP Indigo, Kodak Nexpress, Xeikon, and the Xerox IGen to prevent the unauthorized reproduction of original valuable documents through the use of photocopiers. Furthermore, what is needed in the art are original documents having improved distortion security features that when processed by a peripheral component of a personal computer, such as an optical scanner using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, will disrupt the ability of the software to render a true text version of the scanned document.
Moreover, what is needed in the art are methods for producing such original documents having such improved distortion security features calibrated for, modified, transformed and customized for each digital output device such as laser printers and/or ink-jet printers and/or digital presses.